


terrifying stories of the things we did for love

by forcynics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 1x09, Biting, Blood Drinking, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6209227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it were the other way around, maybe Simon wouldn’t force her to become a monster, just to keep her in his life. Maybe Simon would take the stake and lay her to rest and everyone would cry their hearts out over the things he did for love.</p>
<p>Clary loves differently.</p>
<p>Clary takes the shovel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	terrifying stories of the things we did for love

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt "selfish love has spoken" at the [shadowhunters ficathon](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83265.html)

 

 

 

Clary can’t pinpoint the moment she first knew that her best friend loved her differently than she loved him.

Not _more_. Everyone always thinks _more._ Other kids in school, Simon’s bandmates, Simon’s sister – it’s there in every judging look that’s ever been thrown at her. 

_Simon loves you so much more than you love him._

_Simon deserves someone who could love him more than you love him._

They’re all wrong. Clary never fantasized about kissing Simon, never wished he’d be the one to ask her to a school dance, never imagined a future where they’d end up together, but she never loved Simon Lewis any less than he loved her.

Simon loved her selflessly; she loved him back selfishly.

Not less – different.

Simon’s corpse is at her feet and Raphael offers her a stake or a shovel.

If it were the other way around, maybe Simon wouldn’t force her to become a monster, just to keep her in his life. Maybe Simon would take the stake and lay her to rest and everyone would cry their hearts out over the things he did for love.

Clary loves differently.

Clary takes the shovel.

 

 

 

“You call that love?” Simon accuses, like a stake to her own heart after all.

Simon is a monster, Simon needs to drink blood to survive, and Simon can never tell anyone else he loves what he truly is. They’ll never know how he died.

Simon only has her, and she did this to him, and that knowledge makes something flare hot and possessive in the deepest, darkest crevices of her heart.

“I could never be without you,” she tells him.

She did this for herself, because she couldn’t imagine a world in which she didn’t have him, always at her side, always loving her. 

She did this because she couldn’t bear to lose him. She couldn’t have gone on alone. It would have destroyed her.

Isn’t that love?

 

 

 

Simon’s jaw stretches around new fangs and his eyes flash in the harsh light of the cell where Raphael left them.

His tongue rolls over his fangs as he steps closer. She wonders if he realizes or if it’s entirely unconscious, just a part of who he is now, a part of what she made him.

“Clary, I can smell your blood.” His voice is shaking. “I can hear every beat of your heart.”

If he really blamed her, if he really hated her, surely he would rejoice in having her trapped here with him, surely he would delight in feeding on her like the monster she turned him into. 

“Take it,” she says softly, lifts her hair from her neck to expose the skin and the hint of veins.

She wants to know how it would feel. She wants to know every part of this new Simon, wants to know him better than anyone else. She wants her best friend.

“Clary—” he warns, fists clenched, posture tense with holding himself back. She steps closer to him, reaches a hand to stroke the side of his face.

“Taste it,” she offers, and he gasps out before he pulls her into him and sinks his teeth into her neck.

 

 

 

Her head spins. 

It’s not what she expected.

It hurts, as much as she deserves it to hurt, but there’s something intoxicating in feeling the pulse and flow of her own blood leaving her and knowing that it’s sliding down Simon’s throat, giving him sustenance.

There’s something thrilling in knowing that this is his most primal instinct now, that he couldn’t stop himself as soon as she was close enough.

He moved so quickly it pushed her back into the wall of the cell, his body slammed against hers, and his hands bruising her hips with new strength. His teeth scrape lower down her neck and she shudders.

“Simon,” she gasps, and he pulls away with a choking noise. He lets go of her, blinking dazedly like he doesn’t know how he got here, and he slumps forward, hands bracing against the wall, arms caging her in.

“Clary, I’m so sorry—” he starts to say, but he can’t even get the rest of the words out.

“It’s okay,” she breathes out, touches the place on her neck that is torn and bloodied and throbbing. She still feels lightheaded, but the pain is getting sharper.

Simon’s shaking his head. “It’s not, it’s not okay at all, Clary, I could’ve hurt you, I could’ve—”

Simon brushes her fingers away from the wound and touches the blood on her neck, like he can’t believe he did this to her.

Clary’s heart beats faster in her chest, and it reminds her that Simon’s heart will never beat again.

“What have you done to me?” he asks. He sounds horrified.

She's the one with the blood on her neck, but she's the one who did this.

She touches his cheek, ignores how he flinches, ignores the blood her fingers leave on his skin.

“I couldn’t lose you,” she says softly, simple as that. “I love you,” she says, and Simon jolts, hand pressing harder into her wound like an instinct, eyes squeezing shut.

He leans into her, close enough his nose brushes her cheek, and they both inhale at the same time.

 

 

 

And then Simon’s mouth is on hers, and the tang of her own blood is heavy on her tongue, and Clary kisses him back. She knows that Simon’s imagined this a thousand times, even if she never did.

His mouth is cold, and Clary shivers even as she fists her hands in his shirt and pulls him closer, wanting to get rid of all the space between them, everything and anything between them. She wants him to understand, finally, why she did what she did and how she dared to call it love.

She doesn’t cry out when his fangs prick her lip, doesn’t whimper when he bites down harder and sucks at the blood that wells between them. 

She clings to the boy who's been her best friend for most of her life, the boy she buried in a graveyard just so that she’d never have to let him go.

 

 

 

Yes, she calls that love.

 

 

 


End file.
